What's the question

A young married couple moves into a new apartment and decides to repaper the dining room. They call on a neighbour who has a dining room the same size and ask, “How many rolls of wallpaper did you buy when you papered your dining room?”

“Seven,” he says.?

So the couple buys seven rolls of expensive paper, and they start papering. When they get to the end of the fourth roll, the dining room is finished. Annoyed, they go back to the neighbour and say, “We followed your advice, but we ended up with three extra rolls!”

“So,” he says, “that happened to you too.”

Oops! This happens to every one of us while asking questions. Because the wrong question leads to the wrong answer. The couple wanted to ask how many rolls of wallpaper were actually used when the neighbour fixed his dining room.

Let's try this one. Pick one out of four choices.

Q.- Can I ask you what is your mobile no.?

?1. You say your actual mobile number.

2. You say "Yes, you can!"

3. You say "No, you can't!"

4. You say nothing.

?In this case, answer 2 and 3 is the right answer. If you have chosen 'answer 1' then you didn't pay attention to the question. I was actually asking for permission.?

?In our life when we face a critical problem and we start to think "What should I do now?", then instead of asking the right question we occupy our mind with the right answer and everything seems very wrong because we started with the wrong question.

We should ask a question which helps us to find the cause of the problem and once we find the cause then only we can solve the problem.

?Stay happy; Ask the right questions. :)

#askquestions #communicationskills #softskills Sugata Chowdhuri